Samford is gearing up for its SoCon debut

Samford University’s campus is still nestled on a quiet hillside spot off Lakeshore Drive in Birmingham. Indeed, it’s still a little patch of collegiate paradise home to 4,400 students.

The big change that has taken place at Samford can’t be seen at Reid Chapel or by walking up the steps toward Davis Library. To find it you have to go to Seibert Stadium and the stylish new Pete Hanna Center.

There you will find coaches, players and athletic administrators preparing for the Bulldogs’ debut in the Southern Conference. That comes on Sept. 26, when its women’s soccer team takes on Elon.

“It’s an exciting time around here,” Samford athletic director Bob Roller said Monday from his office at the Hanna Center. “It’s a new chapter here at Samford and we’re looking forward to seeing what happens this first year and in the years to come.”

Samford, a Baptist-affiliated private school that was founded in 1841 as Howard College, officially joined the SoCon on July 1, leaving the Ohio Valley Conference after five years and giving the SoCon, the fifth-oldest Division I conference in the country, a dozen members.

It was a big step, Roller said, one that was a long time coming.

“It’s a culmination of a lot of folks’ dreams that go back to the (1970s) when Samford first went Division I,” Roller said. “That was the conference that some of our trustees ... targeted. It took a while and timing is everything. And this is the right time.”

Samford was among the schools being considered by the SoCon to replace VMI in 2003. The conference opted to take Elon instead, so Samford went to the OVC, which allowed all of Samford’s programs to be in the same conference after years of football competing as an independent and the rest of the teams playing in the Atlantic Sun.

This time around, instead of Samford pursuing the SoCon, as in 2003, it was the conference that approached Samford. SoCon commissioner John Iamarino said the process started in the spring of 2006 and Samford was voted in last spring.

“When we looked at expansion, we wanted to see about adding a team to our western flank to go along with (the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga),” Iamarino said. “Samford was a school we’d considered before; it was one of several schools we looked at; and it became clear to us that the logical decision was Samford.

“It’s strong academically; it’s ranging up athletically; it has excellent facilities. The move to the Southern Conference appealed to them and it appealed to us.”

Now that they’re in, the Bulldogs face many new challenges: playing with the likes of three-time defending national champion Appalachian State in football, NCAA tournament Cinderella Davidson in men’s basketball and UTC’s Lady Mocs, winners of nine straight SoCon regular-season titles, in women’s basketball. There’s also a new slate of opponents to know inside and out and new travel challenges.

The assumption is that based on geography, ease of travel and some shared recruiting territory, Samford and UTC are naturals to become rivals. Located about two hours apart — a simple 70-mph sprint almost totally on I-59 — the games they play against each other will be their fans’ only easy conference road trips, so the interest and attendance for those matchups will almost certainly be better than for other meetings.

But that doesn’t guarantee a healthy rivalry, said UTC football coach Rodney Allison, who lost to Samford, 31-23, in his first game as the Mocs’ coach.

“I think it could be (a big rivalry), but I think it’s one of those games that you’re going to have to play several years and see what happens,” said Allison, whose Mocs host Samford in the season finale on Nov. 22. “Rivalries are created over time; they evolve and we’re just going to have to wait and see how things develop.”

One of the things that appealed to Samford about the SoCon, and vice versa, was the additional balance the Alabama school would bring. It’s a fifth private school, it’s outside the Carolinas and it’s a school that isn’t known athletically just for football.

“We’ve been fortunate to have the diversity that we have work for us, not against us,” Iamarino said. “Samford can bring a lot to this conference, the same way a school like Furman or Wofford does.”

While the biggest on-the-field challenges are expected to come during football season — the Bulldogs are rebuilding under second-year coach Pat Sullivan, the 1971 Heisman Trophy winner — Roller is confident that most of his teams will be competitive right away.

“We’ll win our share of games this year,” Roller said. “We’ve geared up for this for a while, and now it’s time to go play.”